Category : Real user monitoring

As a website owner, you have 100% control over your site, plus a hefty amount of control over the first and middle mile of the network your pages travel over. You can (and you should) optimize the heck out of your pages, invest in a killer back end, and deploy the best content delivery network that money can buy. These tactics put you in charge of several performance areas, which is great.

But when it comes to the last mile — or more specifically, the last few feet — matters are no longer in your hands.

Today, let’s review a handful of performance-leaching culprits that are outside your control — and which can add precious seconds to your load times.

Some of the bulk and complexity of modern web pages is necessary. Larger images sell more products. Third-party scripts help you to better understand your visitors. But there’s a lot of unnecessary weight on most web pages. Rather than focusing exclusively on all the cool new features you want to add to your site this year, spend some time thinking about what you can take away. Here are four tips to help you get started.

I talk to a lot of people who have taken on the role of in-house performance evangelist at their organization, and I know it can be a hard, lonely job. Often it’s a self-appointed role because you’re genuinely passionate about web performance. And often you’re fighting a one-person battle in a workplace that’s already struggling to cover a lot of other technical bases with limited resources.

Over the past few months, we’ve been slowly rolling out Expert Talks, a series of easy-to-digest, solution-agnostic videos that provide brief explainers of key performance concepts. One of our goals in creating this series is to make it easier for you to evangelize within your organization by offering videos that you can use to explain whatever performance issue you’re trying to define or solve.